La Tercera Tema - Envecimiento Global Although at this point the implications are not completely clear, no other force is likely to shape the future of national economic health, public finances, and policymaking in the same way the irreversible rate at which the world's population is ageing will. According to the UN, the proportion of the world's population aged over 65 is set to more than double by 2050, to 16.2% from 7.6% currently. By the middle of the century, about 1 billion over 65s will join the ranks of those classed as of non-working age. The developed economies are ageing much faster than the emerging ones, and this is producing a dynamic where it seems there is a transition taking place between consumer societies and saver societies.

Asked what Spain and Portugal should do to stop the so-called contagion, Edward Hugh, a Barcelona-based economist, replied: “Not do anything wrong.” He went on: “The only thing you can advise these people to do at this stage is to be absolutely frank and stick absolutely to what they say.” “From this point on, the more you do fiscal austerity, the more you contract and the less you can pay,” said Mr Hugh.

Manuel Campa hablando con Bloomberg el martes:

The best thing “to generate credibility in the Spanish economy is to execute the measures we have announced at the time and in the way they were announced, and that implies not taking additional measures,” Jose Manuel Campa, deputy finance minister for the economy, told reporters in Madrid today. Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez declarando en una comisión del senado: “We have to convince people that we’re going to do exactly what we said we were going to do,” Bank of Spain Governor Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez told reporters in Madrid after appearing before a Senate committee today. Spain’s deficit- reduction effort is going “very well,” he said. "The outlook for a gradual recovery is surrounded by uncertainties,“ Bank of Spain Governor Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez told senators."In an environment where financing conditions will foreseeably remain restrictive and in which the public and the private sector have a pressing need to clean up their financial position, we can expect the pace of recovery in household consumption to slow versus the first half of the year," he said.

Contagión En Los Diferenciales

¿Es Este La Solución?

ECB's Weber Says Europe Can Go Beyond EUR750B Rescue Axel Weber, German Central Bank president and council member of the European Central Bank, said Wednesday the euro is solid and euro-zone member states will protect it from speculative attacks, even if that means putting more money on the table. He said any speculative attack on the euro would fail as he assumes European countries are ready to increase the EUR750 billion rescue package created in May to fend off threats to financial stability within the 16 member states of the euro zone. "If that amount is not enough, we could increase it," Weber said. "An attack on the euro has no chance of succeeding."

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Edward Hugh

Born in Liverpool Edward Hugh is a macroeconomist of British origin who has lived in Catalonia for over 25 years. For 20 of those years he lived and worked in Barcelona, but since 2010 he has been living in a small village near the town of Figueres.

Hugh, who studied economics at the LSE in the late sixties before going on to do Masters and Doctoral studies in Manchester, is an expert on the impact of demographic change and migratory processes on economic growth.

His work came to be known to a wider international public following the publication of a New York Times article highlighting his anticipation of the Euro Area crisis.

Since the start of the crisis Hugh has become a reference point for the international press in relation to the difficult economic situation in Spain.

He is an active blogger, and regular contributor to social network platforms like Twitter and Facebook where he is widely followed. He has no political involevment of any kind, and is proud of his reputation as an independent analyst-

In Spain he has recently published a book on the Spanish economy (¿Adios a la crisis?, Deusto 2014), and is a frequent contributor to the Barcelona press.

He is currently working on his next book - No Growth Societies - which will be written and published in English. He is also a regular speaker and participant in Forums and Economic Seminars, within and without Spain, a vocation which has taken him across Europe and the Middle East, from Brussels and Vienna, to Riga and Bergen, to Doha and Tel Aviv.